As the longed-for great British heatwave materialises, the sun beats down upon us and we marvel at the glorious sunshine, the rare clear blue skies, and our slowly parching lawns.

Schools that were built, or rather hastily thrown up in the 1970s do not fare well in this weather. I am roughly the same age as my school building and seem to have aged only marginally better, but that's another story. The building's hasty construction; poor choice of materials, lack of ventilation, and woeful layout turn some classrooms into the equivalent of a Mediterranean pizza oven.

My classroom is on the second floor of our old, crumbling building. I do have some windows that I can open, and at least one that I can't. It sits precariously in its frame, threatening to fatally wound a passer-by underneath. I am, however, fortunate to have some blinds, which I can pull down to, in theory, control the temperature; but the effect is minimal. Oven-like it remains.

I have a morning ritual designed to combat the Hades-like rise in temperature. I open the windows I can open, partially lower the blinds and get that forlorn looking pedestal fan in an health and safety-friendly place. Even so, the classroom is beginning to warm up to a temperature that could easily cook a batch of cupcakes.

During such heatwaves, morning lessons tend to go well. The pupils are the first or second class in the room; they are fairly perky and lucid, the temperature is at least bearable, and neither myself, nor the pupils, are sweating to the degree where we are uncomfortable.

Afternoon lessons, however, become an endurance test. The pupils are exhausted from having sat in a range of classrooms with a range of different temperatures; those lessons on the upper floors, facing the wrong direction, faring the worst. Few of our pupils remember to bring in water, never mind enough water to drink during the day. Those who have water bottles can top them up in the canteen during the brief, half-hour lunch break, needless to say they rarely accomplish it.

Often pupils will still partake in 'the battle of the coat' or 'the skirmish of the jumper' for varying reasons such as a greying, stained, unwashed school shirt; or having not quite mastered the art of personal hygiene, or even worse to hide bruises, scars, bumps and scratches inflicted by themselves or others.

So, the teaching and learning bit is like wading through treacle with blancmange in your brain and, regrettably, deeply regrettably, the patience of a bulldog chewing a wasp.

I stand still; I sweat. I move, even just a little bit, sweat drips down my legs. If I sit down, even on a fabric seat I risk skin and fabric fusing so that standing up again means leaving a layer of skin behind. Not forgetting the horrors of 'teacher's armpit,' a dark patch which spreads quickly underneath your arms while you lament that yet another 24-hour deodorant brand's claim has failed the acid test.

Meanwhile, the poor pupils enter the oppressive heat and are instantly demotivated. The aforementioned forlorn pedestal fan merely spreads the warm air at a faster speed over a wider radius. The uncomfortable, plastic seats make their legs and bottoms become drenched in sweat, while the oppressive heat makes those uncared for pupils 'ripen'; their shirts even grubbier, and them more self-conscious.

Fortunately, we are finally getting a new school building; although it seems to be at the pace of an arthritic snail.

I have a friend who works for the construction company that will build our new school. We chatted about the evil of teaching in Hades-like classrooms recently. He explained the following about our new build; windows will open, without falling out and maiming passers-by underneath, the school heating systems should be much more cost effective, and teachers may even be allowed to have thermostats and be able to control them ourselves come winter time. However, classrooms will still be hot, not just warm: "hot" in this kind of weather.

The budget for these new builds are not anywhere near the scale of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, ergo, something like air-conditioning or a more green equivalent is just not within the building's budget. I do wonder how well Ofsted inspectors, and Michael Gove himself would cope in these temperatures? I wonder how we can achieve consistent good to outstanding teaching and learning, given the hellish environment our schools becomes in a heatwave. I wonder why this seems to be given so little consideration by the people who build and fund new school builds.

A minor advantage has been using our oven-like room as a stimulus for thesaurus work, experimentation with sentence types and descriptive writing.

Unbelievably, schools are having Ofsted inspections in this final week of the year. To what end? Crumbling buildings, sauna-like classrooms, exhausted teachers and hot, sweaty, demotivated, demob happy children is not quite the ideal recipe for anything like an outstanding inspection.

If standards and rigour are of the utmost importance, Mr Gove, shouldn't that philosophy also be applied to the very fabric of our school buildings?